Last week, actor Bill Paxton died as a the result of an ischemic stroke during heart-valve surgery. Every surgery has a risk of stroke, and every heart surgery has an even higher risk of stroke, but it’s still unusual to see an otherwise healthy 61-year-old die in the course of a heart valve surgery. As a recent study in Britain found, even among patients over 65-years-old, long-term survival is “excellent.” Patients over 65 who underwent aortic valve replacement generally had no difference in mortality at all for the first 8 years after surgery. So what happened in Bill Paxton’s surgery? We deal with these issues all the time as medical malpractice lawyers. Technically, a stroke during or immediately after a surgery is “perioperative stroke.” Perioperative strokes are one of the most common complications of all surgeries. In non-cardiac, non-neurological, non-major vascular surgery, up to 2% of patients suffer a perioperative ischemic stroke. Most of those patients have a complicating risk factor, like advanced age, a history of renal failure, or a history of stroke. In high-risk cardiovascular surgery, researchers have found that between 2% and 10% of patients suffer a stroke of some degree, with the highest risks found in mitral valve surgery and double or triple valve surgery. […]